Mary Steer only has her ears pierced. She will be ringing in 2018 with a long story, “The Yarnabomber”, appearing in The Ocotillo Review. It will be available for purchase by mid-January at kallistogaiapress.org. You can read more of Mary’s work at marysteer.com.

I do hope that you are one of the ones who ‘love it’, but if you aren’t, I’ll still like you anyway.

”If there’s one good thing to be said about opera, it’s that it makes a man appreciate all other forms of entertainment so much more.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

I however prefer this one:
Without Puccini, there is no opera; without opera, the world is an even drearier place than the evening news would have us think.”

And of course, from the movie that has the same title as the 1965 hit from Mr. Orbison:

People’s reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don’t, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul. J. F. LAWTON